Biofeedback
Biofeedback is a technique that promotes relaxation and imagery to control body functions such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, muscle tension, and pain. The setup for biofeedback has you connected to electrodes to measure body functions that are displayed on a monitor you can watch. Three common types of biofeedback include electromyography, to measure muscle tension; thermal biofeedback, to measure skin temperature; and electroencephalography, to measure brain activity.
Essential
Each biofeedback session lasts less than one hour. The number of sessions depends on the condition being treated. Most patients notice benefit after eight to ten sessions. It's not a quick fix, and it takes a commitment on the part of the patient.
Your biofeedback practitioner will evoke stress in you and then guide you to relax — all while you're observing the monitor and recognizing how stress versus relaxation changes the parameters on the monitor. From the biofeedback experience, you're taught to control your own body functions.
Goals of Biofeedback
The goal of biofeedback is that you learn to control body functions when not attached to the monitor as well as when you are attached to the monitor. The benefit of biofeedback is being able to use the principles in the practical world. Research has shown that biofeedback is especially helpful for neck and shoulder pain and Raynaud's disease. Biofeedback hasn't been found to help lower-back pain as much.
Licensed Practitioner
Most states don't restrict who can offer biofeedback services. The Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) emphasizes at
Success of Biofeedback
According to AAPB, several studies (some small controlled studies and small clinical studies) indicated that study participants had decreases in pain and physical markers of arthritis following temperature and muscle tension biofeedback. The therapy was rated 3 for efficacy on a scale of 1 to 5.
Essentially, as described by the Mayo Clinic, biofeedback uses your mind to control your body. It's a high-tech way of using your mind to improve your health, which in the case of arthritis patients means using your mind to control pain, muscle tension, and fatigue. Because practitioners aren't sure exactly how biofeedback works other than theoretically, you are not advised to stop conventional treatments when participating in biofeedback.
